Skip to main content Skip to local navigation
Graduate Supervision Toolkit Faculty of Graduate Studies
Home » Supervisor Hub » Getting Started

Getting Started

Two women sit on a blue couch engaged in a conversation. One, with short curly hair, wears a black top and gray pants; the other, with white hair and glasses, wears a white blouse and holds a clipboard. A tablet rests on a nearby table, and the setting includes warm lighting and a contemporary interior with wooden paneling and potted plants.

Supervising graduate students through their academic journey is both a gratifying and demanding aspect of a faculty member's role.   While each supervisor-student relationship is unique, certain best practices can foster a mutually beneficial and productive relationship.

As a graduate supervisor, you oversee both the academic and research progress of your student. Your role encompasses guiding them through the stages of research, professional growth, and personal development, from the initial meeting to the completion of their scholarly project. Enacting the supervisory roles outlined by FGS' supervision guidelines are an expected component of being appointed to FGS and by default, being provided the opportunity to supervise graduate students.

Building a strong, professional relationship with your student from the start is essential, and it is important to set clear expectations early on and ensure mutual agreement on the terms of your working relationship. Your mentorship should support the student's academic growth, providing them with the necessary support, training, and resources to conduct high-quality graduate work and research. This approach not only enriches the student's academic experience but also contributes to the overall success of their graduate studies and future career endeavours.

Welcome Bundle

Principles Guiding Graduate Supervision at York University

Principle One: Dignity

  • The shared recognition of each person’s history, background and inherent worth.

Try this

  • Relational Lens: See each graduate student as a whole person, not just a researcher. Look through a lens of a lived story where every student brings a world language, land, family, learning style and struggle and approach supervision as a shared journey where they are welcomed.
  • Begin supervision with a conversation that invites the graduate student to share how their ancestry, language, or lived experiences shape their scholarship.

Principle Two: Respect

  • The acknowledgement of each person’s right to a supportive working supervisory relationship built on earned trust, partnership and open communication.

Try This

  • Relational Lens: Respect is about meeting someone where they are, respecting their past learning experiences and their learning styles. Use a listening lens to build a relationship where graduate students feel they can be honest without fear, where questions are invitations, not tests, and where being heard matters. Respect can grow when supervisors and students slow down and stay present.
  • Create consent-based communication agreements early on. You may ask your graduate student: “What makes feedback feel constructive or hurtful to you? What times or formats of supervision work best for your energy and boundaries?”

Principle Three: Mutuality

  • The enactment of positive interactive relationships grounded in cooperation and shared goals, contributing to a beneficial and enjoyable academic journey for all.

Try This

  • Relational Lens: Think of mutuality as walking a shared path by looking through a co-creation lens. You and your graduate student are navigating a journey that unfolds between you. Their questions matter as much as your guidance. When trust and learning deepen, it is because both of you showed up with steadiness, respect, and compassion.
  • Regularly co-create timelines with students. Ask what feels realistic for them and adjust as necessary.
  • Acknowledge a student's contributions: cite them, thank them, and name their contribution.

Principle Four: Efficacy

  • The enactment of best practices to achieve the responsibilities attached to graduate supervisory roles including those attached to goal-directed learning and student progress.

Try This

  • Relational Lens: See efficacy as showing up with steady support. Through a lens of helpfulness, it means being someone your graduate student can rely on, not to have all the answers, but to help clear the way when things get hard.
  • Avoid vague check-ins and instead have short, focused planning sessions where the student helps create the agenda and you help them identify supports, not only assess progress.

Principle Five: Accountability

  • Holding oneself accountable to the highest standards of supervisory, intellectual, academic, research and relational integrity as related to graduate education.

Try This

  • Relational Lens: Accountability becomes a form of care when we stay mindful of how our actions affect the people we’re in relationship with. It is not about blame; it is about protecting trust. When students see you own your part, they feel safer to keep showing up as themselves.
  • Establish regular self-reflection time. You may ask yourself monthly (for example): Where have I been most present or available and where might someone have needed more from me? Who have I connected well with this month, and who might I want to check in on more intentionally? How have I created space for my graduate students to thrive, and where might I have moved too quickly or missed a signal?
  • Invite feedback from your students anonymously or directly and show what you have done with that feedback.

Read and explore the new Graduate Supervision Handbook (pdf) from FGS at YorkU. This handbook endeavours to support graduate supervisors with practical guidance, relational strategies, and thoughtful tools and policies to cultivate respectful, collaborative, and enriching supervision experiences.

View the Questions to Consider Before Accepting a Graduate Student (pdf). These guiding questions can be used to reflect on alignment, expectations, and readiness before agreeing to supervise a graduate student.

Read the Golden Rules of Graduate Supervision (pdf) that offers guiding principles and practical insights to help supervisors foster supportive, equitable, and effective supervisory relationships that enable graduate students to thrive.

Visit the Faculty of Graduate Studies Graduate Supervision website for more information on Master's Supervision, Doctoral Supervision, Role of the Graduate Program Office, Supervisory Committees, Annual Progress Reports, and Conflict Resolution.

Graduate Supervision is the central and most influential way students learn during their graduate degree. It is a mentoring relationship between you and your student characterized by the intentional provision of guidance, teaching and learning activities and feedback. It's also a relationship that, when grounded in dignity, mutuality and respect, can be one of the most impactful academic experiences for supervisors and students alike. The intent of supervision is to guide graduate students through their research, scholarly and/or creative work, while fostering intellectual, disciplinary and professional growth. All participants have a role: you, your students and the supervisory committee. Understanding these roles, and actively enacting yours is a key way to be effective while attending to your own work-life balance.

Roles and Responsibilities of a Graduate Supervisor

The supervisor’s principal task consists of helping students realize their scholarly potential. This can only be accomplished in a relationship that offers insights born of experience, and furnishes the requisite challenges, stimulation, guidance and genuine support. The student has a right to expect expertise, accessibility and support from the supervisor. The supervisor must offer substantive and procedural assistance with the design, planning and conduct of feasible research projects, introduction to the network of scholars in the area of specialization, and support for the presentation and publication of research results. At the same time, the supervisor must ensure that the scholarly standards of the university and the discipline are met in the student’s work.

  • Read the Graduate Supervision Handbook (pdf) from FGS. This handbook endeavours to support graduate supervisors with practical guidance, relational strategies, and thoughtful tools and policies to cultivate respectful, collaborative, and enriching supervision experiences.
  • Read the YorkU Graduate Supervision Guidelines (.pdf). This document describes the responsibilities of supervisors, committee members and students. Enacting these roles is an expected component of FGS appointment. They are designed to support an environment in which a professional working relationship can flourish and where your expertise can support student learning.
  • Read the YorkU The Strong Start to Supervision Checklist (.pdf). from the Faculty of Graduate Studies. The aim of the checklist is to facilitate a strong start to the supervisory relationship through clarification and discussion of key relevant items.
  • Read the YorkU Strong Start to Supervision: An International Student Companion Guide. It aims to bring awareness to the unique aspects of the International graduate student experience while fostering open dialogue between supervisor and student. The Companion Guide is structured around the phases that International graduate students follow from pre-arrival to pre-graduation in order to provide the supervisor with a complete picture of their experiences.
  • Read the Guidelines for Remote Supervision (pdf). The supervisory relationship whether in person or remote plays a pivotal role in graduate students’ academic progress and wellbeing. It requires careful attention to power dynamics, boundaries, communication, and best practices to ensure supportive, strengths-based guidance.

Roles and Responsibilities of Supervisory Committee Members

Supervisory committee members are learned scholars chosen for their content and/or methodological expertise. Their role is to support the supervisor's main task to assist the student's growth and development and ultimate successful completion of their graduate thesis, dissertation and/or creative work. Facilitating the graduate student’s intellectual growth and contribution to a field of knowledge, and assisting and supporting the supervisor in providing guidance, consultation, and advice on a student’s research are integral roles for committee members. As part of their appointment to FGS, supervisory committee members are expected to:

  • read the thesis in a timely fashion and make a recommendation to the Graduate Program Director regarding the oral defence.
  • review a student’s research proposal and recommend its approval to the appropriate Graduate Program Director and the Dean not less than three months prior to the date set for the oral examination;
  • review the student’s progress from time to time, normally every six (6) months and never less than once each year. Reports to the Graduate Program Director of unsatisfactory progress may require a student to withdraw from a program of studies or withdraw from the graduate program in which the student is enrolled;
  • meet annually with the student, normally in the spring, to evaluate the Report on Progress submitted by the student and submit a completed copy of the Report on Progress to the Graduate Program Director after the meeting; and,
  • read the thesis in a timely fashion and make a recommendation to the Graduate Program Director regarding the oral defence.

Roles and Responsibilities of Graduate Programs and GPDs

The role of the Graduate Program Office (GPO) in supporting graduate student supervision is a very important one. The GPO is responsible for setting program expectations, ensuring that graduate students have a clear sense of understanding of how to successfully fulfill their degree requirements in a timely manner, and assist in resolving difficulties. Programs differ greatly across Faculties and disciplines and therefore operate in different ways. The GPO role in supervision may include:

  • assisting students in confirming a supervisor;
  • reviewing the student’s progress from time to time and reminding students of important deadlines;
  • reviewing the student’s progress from time to time and reminding students of important deadlines;
  • reviewing and approving supervisory committee composition;
  • reviewing, approving and scheduling oral defences;
  • assisting and supporting students with personal difficulties impacting their progress
  • participating in the resolution of any supervisor-student conflicts.

Ontario Policies, Principles and Guidelines

In 2024, the FGS Faculty Council endorsed the Principles for Graduate Supervision at Ontario Universities. In doing so, FGS and the graduate community recognizes the shared responsibility between the student, supervisor, committee members, programs, GPDs, FGS and the university at large to co-create the circumstances and procedures where graduate student supervision can thrive.

Setting Expectations

The International Council on Graduate Schools 2022 International summit, established principles related to mentorship in graduate studies stating that mentorship is most effective when it:

  • focuses on the “whole” student, making room for each student’s scholarly and career aspirations and cultural background.
  • is viewed as a collaborative process between student and mentor, where each has a role to play.
  • respects the student’s need to maintain positive mental health and well-being, and the need to balance the demands of research with personal interests and commitments.
  • allows students to take intellectual risks and develop new scholarly paradigms and products.
  • encourages all parties to embrace career diversity.
  • is appropriately supported, but not replaced, by technology.
  • encourages students to use scholarly paradigms and methods to generate new knowledge for public benefit.

Graduate supervisors or committee members who embrace their role as a mentor:

  • Commit to using practices of self-reflection and personal development, both to model this concept to mentees and to improve one's own mentoring practices.
  • Seek out training and other professional development opportunities to improve understanding of effective mentoring practices and ability to use appropriate technologies.
  • Develop and communicate transparent expectations for student mentees, and encourage mentees to clearly communicate their own learning and career goals.
  • Consider using Individual Development Plans (IDPs) and mentorship contracts as a framework for making expectations transparent.
  • Develop awareness of differences in cultural backgrounds of students, including students from underrepresented backgrounds and international students.
  • Encourage all students to prepare for careers inside and outside the university by developing both a CV and a resume.
  • Encourage and support advisees in seeking out mentors outside the primary mentoring relationship, such as peers, employers, and other faculty.
  • Help mentees understand that developing relationships with a range of trusted advisors is a skill that will help them achieve greater independence and develop a lifelong skill in relationship building.

Read and share the Graduate Student Skills Inventory (pdf). This is a self-assessment tool that helps supervisors and students identify strengths, growth areas and evolving priorities - laying the groundwork for intentional, collaborative academic skill-building over time.

Conversations

Meetings

FGS Forms

These forms apply to most of your graduate students. While they may not be needed immediately, it is important to be aware of them early on, as they will be required closer to degree completion. Encourage your student to connect with their Graduate Program Assistant for details specific to their program.

General Resources

  • Share Enrollment Information with students who need assistance with enrolling in graduate courses.
  • Share Important Dates for convocation timelines and registration.
  • Share Registration Information for students who need information on registering each term as a graduate student.
  • Visit Theses Canada. This is a collaborative program between Library and Archives Canada and Canadian universities which aims to acquire and preserve theses and dissertations from participating universities, provide open access to Canadian digital theses and dissertations in the collection and facilitate access to non-digital theses and dissertations in the collection.
  • Read the YorkU Thesis Dissertation Formats Guide (.pdf). This is a guide for graduate faculty and graduate students that explains important considerations for graduate students considering a thesis/dissertation format that differs from the commonly used monograph or manuscript-based formats.
  • Visit YorkSpace. This is an open access repository that enables York community members to disseminate and preserve their scholarly works in an institutional context. 

Master's Resources

  • Share the Master's Thesis page for information on:
    • General Requirements
    • Thesis Proposals
    • Research Ethics
    • Copyright
    • Organization and Technical Requirements
    • Thesis Exam Committees
    • Scheduling
    • Evaluation Guidelines and Results
    • Exam Committee Roles and Responsibilities
    • Final Submission and How to Submit
    • Embargo/Potential delay of publication
    • Uploading Files
    • Next Steps

Doctoral Resources

  • Read the YorkU Doctoral Dissertation & Defence Timelines: A Quick Guide for Faculty and Staff.
  • Share the Doctoral Dissertation page for information on:
    • General Requirements
    • Dissertation Proposals
    • Research Ethics
    • Copyright
    • Organization and Technical Requirements
    • Doctoral Dissertation Exam Committees
    • Scheduling
    • Evaluation Guidelines and Results
    • Exam Committee Roles and Responsibilities
    • Final Submission and How to Submit
    • Embargo/Potential delay of publication
    • Uploading Files
    • Next Steps
  • Share Course and Program fees information with students seeking details about tuition, graduate course costs, part-time and full-time fees, and additional expenses like health plans, meal plans, and housing.
  • Share Funding at York with students who require assistance with their funding package.
    • If students have questions about their personal graduate student funding package, the first point of contact should be their Graduate Program Assistant. Share Speak with your Grad Funding Advisor with your student for more information.
  • Share Graduate Fellowship funding information along with general Masters and Doctoral programs funding information.
  • Share My Student Account. This is an online tool where students can see current and historical financial account details. Access requires a Passport York login. Your students will have a financial account associated with their unique student number. This account is where fees and payments are posted. Information includes statements, balances, transactions and key due dates.
  • Share Refunds if students need more information about eligibility, programs, refund tables and EFTs.
  • Share Scholarships and Awards opportunities and The Financial Aid, Awards and Scholarships (FAAS) Application with students who are interested in applying.
    • Watch Graduate Scholarships and Awards at York University.
  • Visit the Student Financial Services for information about accounts, fees, financial aid, work/study programs and navigating the financial journey.
  • Share Student Personal Information if students need to update their information to ensure YorkU is always able to communicate with them about their academic record, financial matters, graduation and/or unexpected scheduling changes or closures, and is able to authenticate their enrolment with government agencies.

In graduate education, intellectual property is a dual responsibility. Graduate students and their supervisor and supervisory committee members are expected to behave in an ethically appropriate manner beyond their immediate graduate student and supervisory relationship, to encompass intellectual property rights and responsibilities, dissemination of research, scholarly, and/or creative works, and in making decisions on authorship and publication and dissemination of joint works.

No individual agreement between a faculty member and a graduate student will impose unreasonable or unusual conditions on a student. To that end, parties are encouraged to agree in writing to matters concerning IP at the onset of the relationship through the Intellectual Property Awareness Checklist (pdf), and the Intellectual Property Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) between Graduate Students and Graduate Supervisors (pdf).

  • Share the Accommodations for Graduate Students for students who require accommodations prior to beginning academic work.
  • Share the Incoming Students Checklist to help students prepare for graduate studies and transition smoothly to campus life. It includes steps such as accepting admission, enrolling in courses, setting up Passport York, and getting a YU-card.
  • Share You've Been Admitted to help students with pre-arrival webinars, housing, disability accommodation, health plans, email services, community events, campus life and more.
  • Visit Faculty Affairs to learn about the various categories of employment and non-employment such as Teaching Assistant (TA), Graduate Assistant (GA), Research Assistant, and other research-related work that may be performed by a graduate student.